Hydro Jetting in Lakewood

Lakewood is the textbook example of the postwar American tract city. Between 1950 and 1953, crews moving down the streets in assembly-line fashion put up more than seventeen thousand homes on what had been bean fields, and the city incorporated in 1954 before the paint was dry on the last of them. The houses were built from a small catalog of floor plans, set on slab foundations, with sewer laterals laid the same way lot after lot. That uniformity made Lakewood affordable and famous. Seventy-plus years later, it also means the sewer pipes under those homes are failing in a remarkably predictable pattern.

If you own a home in one of the original tracts, your lateral is the same age, the same material, and nearly the same configuration as thousands of others. The fixes that worked for your neighbors will almost certainly apply to you. Trenchless sewer repair is well suited to Lakewood's compact lots and short lateral runs, and the Lakewood sewer lateral service information covers the local service area. The rest of this page explains the specifics.

Lakewood's pipe and housing conditions

The original tracts, which make up most of the city between Del Amo Boulevard and Carson Street and from the San Gabriel River west toward Long Beach, share a few constants. Foundations are slab-on-grade. Drain lines under the slab are cast iron, which corrodes from the inside, loses wall thickness along the bottom where water runs, and eventually develops holes. The lateral from the slab edge to the street main is a short run, usually under a small front lawn and a sidewalk, made of either vitrified clay in short mortared segments or Orangeburg fiber pipe. Which one you have depends on what was delivered that week in 1951.

Lakewood's soil is flat alluvial plain with sandy and silty layers and a relatively shallow water table. It does not heave the way expansive clays do, but it settles, and seventy years of settlement has left many laterals with slight bellies that trap solids. Street trees were planted at the same time as the houses, so the magnolias, camphors, and liquidambars are now fully mature with root systems that reach any leaking joint. Root intrusion into clay and the slow collapse of Orangeburg account for most of the service calls in the original tracts. Later subdivisions on the city's edges from the 1960s and 1970s shift toward clay and then ABS, with fewer Orangeburg problems but still aging cast iron under slabs.

Which trenchless method fits which problem

The first step is always hydro jetting to clear roots and scale, followed by a camera inspection recorded from the cleanout to the main. What the camera shows determines the method.

• CIPP lining fits clay laterals with cracked segments, leaking joints, and root intrusion, provided the pipe still holds its round shape. A resin-saturated liner is installed and cured in place, producing a jointless pipe inside the old one. For more on how liners are built and cured, learn how cured-in-place liners work is a good starting point.
• Pipe bursting is the standard choice for Orangeburg and for any lateral that has collapsed or ovaled. The straight, short runs in Lakewood tracts are ideal for it, with one pit near the foundation and one at the sidewalk.
• Sectional point repair addresses an isolated defect, such as a single crushed segment under the driveway apron, without treating the full length.
• Spin-cast lining rehabilitates cast-iron drains under the slab and larger lines serving the commercial corridors along Lakewood Boulevard and around the mall, applying a structural coating from inside the pipe.

For a closer look at the method itself, epoxy liner installation in detail covers the materials, the cure, and where lining fits.

Permits, utilities, and inspections

Lakewood issues permits for sewer lateral work through its Community Development and Public Works functions, and the connection at the main is inspected when work reaches the right-of-way. The property owner is responsible for the lateral from the house to the main, including the segment under the sidewalk and parkway. The contractor calls DigAlert, the regional 811 service, before any pit is opened so that gas, water, electric, and communications lines are marked. Lakewood does not require a point-of-sale sewer inspection, but buyers' inspectors in the city routinely ask for lateral camera footage.

What to expect from an estimate visit

A good estimate visit is mostly inspection. The installer locates the cleanouts, runs the camera, and shows you the footage with distances and depths marked. You should leave with a written scope that names one method, states the length of pipe involved, shows where any pits or new cleanouts will go, and spells out restoration of lawn and concrete. Even though Lakewood homes repeat the same plans, the footage is still what the recommendation should rest on.

Hydro Jetting in Lakewood

What a jetter does that a cable cannot

A hydro jetter pushes water through a nozzle at several thousand PSI. Rear-facing jets pull the hose down the line and scour everything off the pipe wall: roots, grease, sludge, mineral scale, and the rust flakes inside old cast iron. A cable machine drills a hole through the blockage and leaves the rest on the wall, which is why cabled lines re-clog on a schedule.

Where it fits in a repair

Jetting is step one before lining, because a liner has to bond to clean pipe, and step one before an honest camera inspection, because a line full of roots or scale hides its own condition. It is also legitimate maintenance on its own for a structurally sound line that roots keep finding.

When a line should not be jetted

Cast iron that is paper-thin at the bottom can be opened up by an aggressive descaling pass. A collapsed clay section will not let the hose through. Orangeburg can delaminate under pressure. An experienced operator checks the line first, matches the nozzle to the material, and stops if the pipe is not holding up.

Maintenance versus repair

If the camera shows sound pipe, annual or semiannual jetting is a cheap way to stay ahead of roots. If it shows open joints, channeled cast iron or offsets, jetting is a stopgap and the money is better spent on lining, which removes the joints the roots are using.

More trenchless services in Lakewood

Questions we hear in Lakewood